Page 51 of Watch Me

“Especially last month. Revenues skyrocketed.”

“Yeah.” He purses his lips.

This is normally good news, so his reaction is surprising. “That makes this investment look even more profitable than you initially pitched. Why are you acting like it’s a bad thing?”

A week ago, I was in Dubai having a mid-life crisis. I’d taken a job just to get away from the mess of things I’d made at home, only to find I was miserable doing hospitality consultation. I was sick of working for the same kinds of guys, making decisions on projects I had no personal stake in—decisions I ultimately wouldn’t care about when I walked away. For a while now, I’ve known that I was ready to get more hands-on in investing. In fact, David and I have talked about partnering in the club on and off for years. So when he brought it up again on the phone, I surprised him by leaping at the chance.

Let’s do it now, I’d said, more than happy for an excuse to abandon the project I cared so little about. The time was right, and I was ready… but now David seems like he isn’t.

He takes a deep sigh. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

David is usually a happy-go-lucky guy. Very little gets to him. So when David’s this serious, shit is bad. I start to wonder if I could have missed something in my research.

“Last month, we started a show at the club,” he continues. “Something really different. Something… exceptional.”

Despite myself, I reach for my glass and take a sip of the whiskey. Something tugs at my intuition.

A show…

“It’s a performance. It’s sexy, but it’s—” he cuts a worried glance at me, “not a sex show. So it draws in a bigger crowd. It’s been getting great reviews. More and more people come for the show, and end up staying or coming back. It’s been really good for business.”

“Uh-huh…”

He clears his throat. “You see, a few weeks after you left for Dubai, I went to the Paradise Lounge and saw Zoë. We got to talking, and then we… stayed in touch. She was having a hard time. Please don’t look at me like that. We became friends, and I wanted to help her.”

My voice is low and sinister when I speak. “Are you saying that Zoë Mars is in this show?”

He closes his eyes as he nods his head. “Zoë Mars is this show. She choreographs, stage-manages, and performs in it.”

Rage is the wrong response, I tell myself, even though red is closing in on the periphery of my vision.

He lied to me through omission. He brought me in closer to my biggest mistake, the folly that nearly cost me my relationship with my son—my greatest sin. I’m shaking my head and pushing my chair back, fury choking me.

He called me and suggested this partnership. I was safely far away in Dubai. Never once did he tell me that he’d brought Zoë into the fold, that coming back would mean getting into startling proximity to her. I’m furious, but something even worse is boiling in my blood, too—a kind of excitement. The beast rears its ugly head. Just knowing she’s been here, could be here now, and my thoughts are like starving wolves, circling their prey.

Zoë, Zoë, Zoë, Zoë.

All these months, I’ve tried to push her out of my thoughts by any means necessary. And the irony is that only last night, in this exact same club, was I finally able to do it.

Time and again in Dubai, I ended up in expensive bars, restaurants, and clubs with the guys I was working with while they slipped wedding rings off their fingers and called over the most beautiful women in the room to join us. I played along by putting my arms around girls and flirting with them, but when it came time to bring them back to my plush hotel room, I could never do it. Zoë was a festering wound in my side, demanding attention. I could try to go through the motions but never get her out of my head—not once, until last night.

I still felt guilt, unzipping my pants and sliding my cock into that faceless mouth—as if I were betraying her. That’s the kind of senseless thinking I’ve been living with for six months. But when I realized I was losing myself in the masked girl, at last, I was filled with relief. It meant I was finally moving on. That it’s possible to get over Zoë. That I was putting it all behind me after so long.

And now, here, the very next day, I discover that David has sprung a trap for me. He never let her go. And the obsession washes over me anew.

She has such a hold over me, and he knows she does, yet he willingly sought out her friendship and then hired her here at the club and never told me?

I stand up and grip the back of the metal chair, my jaw flexing, propelled to my feet by rage, but it barely seems to register for him. He runs a hand over his pale face and sighs.

“Please sit down,” he says. “There’s more.”

There’s more?

There’s fucking more?

“How could you not tell me?” I seethe. Then, a thought occurs to me. “Did you fuck her?”

Of all the things to be upset about right now, that shouldn’t be my number one concern. She was Tate’s girl and never should have been mine. That’s all that matters. But the idea that David went after her once I was out of the picture and had her all to himself is enough to convince me to kill him.

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